"Rajan Soni's gentle lyricism gives content to the abstractions of provenance and becoming. While we are all aware of the constitutive intersection of the roots and routes of identity, Looking for Lakshmi maps vividly the various journeys that ushered the author into being. Its portraits - of different times, contexts and people - transform cultural history into lived reality. As readers, we are blessed by Soni's invitation to travel with him" - Michael Titlestad, Professor of Literature, University of Witwatersrand. The story begins at high seas on a twelve-day voyage across the Indian Ocean in the bowels of the SS Karanja bound for Bombay. It is February 1972 and the author has £200, stitched into the inside pocket of his trousers by an Indian tailor in Mombasa 'wise to the embraces of Indian pickpockets'. The thousand-mile journey to his ancestral home in an ancient village in North Punjab lies ahead. Rajan Soni's weaves together aspects of both his African and Indian inheritance to fashion a tale of his search for his anonymous Indian grandmother, Bibiji, whose legacy is shrouded in silence. The political and the spiritual, as he traces Bibiji's shadow on generations of his family dispersed across continents. His is a search for meaning that conjures universal themes, which will resonate with readers who will see their own migratory histories etched on familiar canvasses of cultural and political turmoil: latent lines of fate, family and political history shaping personal destiny. Unfailing attention to the exquisite sensual details of place lends a richly textured, atmospheric flavour to the writing. This evocative narrative straddles the emerging discipline of Indian Ocean Studies and the life writing. By turns restless, sardonic, lyrical, reflexive - always quietly compassionate - Looking for Lakshmi is an engaging new contribution to diasporic writing.

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